‘Before and during the early stages of the thinking skills movement of the past 20 to 30 years, the ‘brain-mind’ was often called a ‘black box’, an unknown and unknowable mystery.’….. It was during the mid-1980s ‘thinking’ or ‘thinking skills’ became popular in schools.
Thinking Skills – When they became popular: Why and What Now? Read More
You have read the EEF report, you have tried and begun to embed different metacognitive strategies, you meet students in the corridor that begin to talk about their learning… What is your next step? That’s easy to answer: become a Thinking School! A Thinking School takes an explicit, evidence informed, whole school approach to developing pupils’ cognitive capability and intelligent learning behaviours.
What is a Thinking School? The journey towards accreditation Read More
With its easy ‘fit’ with the Thinking Skills and Personal Capabilities framework within the Northern Ireland statutory curriculum, the Thinking School approach continues to draw interest from local schools there.
Thinking Matters in Northern Ireland Read More
As the summer term looms with exam and assessment season this is the moment for us to take a step back and remind ourselves of the metacognitive cycle. Please indulge me on this one! Slogging towards someone else’s goal is never going to be motivating. For some students achieving their best or being given a target grade is not an enticing carrot; it feels like an imposed, overwhelming or unacheivable target.
Can you motivate all your students to self-direct their revision? Read More
As the spring term comes to a close, Thinking Matters brings you our latest Research Round-up. This month the highlighted books and articles focus on metacognitive strategies, retrieval practice, well-being and self-regulated learning.
In this article, we explain how the Thinking Matters approach follows the best research-informed strategies for the implementation of metacognition and self-regulated learning and how this relates to the EEF’s ‘Putting Evidence to Work – A School’s Guide to Implementation’.
The EEF and Implementation: Metacognition and Self-regulated Learning Read More
If I shout duck, how would you respond? Any sense of urgency or fear in my voice would probably prompt a reflexive response. Duck and you would duck! Call and response is one way we help develop and create neural networks to build automaticity and reduce the bottleneck in our working memory.
What are the benefits of a common metacognitive language? Read More
Thinking Matters: Research Round-up on Metacognition and Independent Learning.
February Research Round-up on Metacognition and Independent Learning: Read More
The past few weeks have been ablaze with news about AI and specifically ChatGPT; mainly its potential to become a homework shortcut or useful tool for teachers. One school, Alleyn’s in Dulwich, has moved to a flip learning model as access to ChatGPT presents easy opportunities for students to use it to generate their homework. Teachers will now set students tasks to research and prepare for their next lesson instead of sitting tests or writing essays. However, is this just another example of the forward march of algorithms and other AI technologies without anyone asking about the ethical or moral implications?
What place has AI in our metacognitive classroom? Read More
Peter Short, a senior teacher from Wellington Primary School in Hounslow, writes about his personal journey to find a Thinking School.
A search for a Thinking School Read More